Wednesday, June 21, 2017

At this day and age, people are always on their phones and laptops. We used these gadgets to communicate and for entertainment. But it can also be very useful for Stay at Home Moms. With the right applications, we can use our phones to help us with our everyday lives.

Here are 7 Useful Mobile Apps for Stay at Home Mom

#1 Youtube (Free app)

I know this is a common app that probably everyone has on their phones and gadgets. But this app is really important for a SAHM(Stay At Home Mom). Personally, my reason is that this app can really literally keep a mom sane. I'm not kidding you. Seriously, I get things done in my home with the help of Youtube.

Whenever I feel very lazy to clean the house, organize and lazy in general, I just search for videos where people show you how they clean and organize their houses, how they manage their finances, how they manage their time, how to do everything. You can find anything on youtube if you can think it, those have a video for it. So I just search for those videos while I'm just lazily sitting or laying around the house and then 'poof' I suddenly feel motivated to clean my home or start budgeting, etc. Sometimes I play music videos too, But that happens occasionally. I'm really into those cleaning and organizing videos.

#2 Pinterest (Free app)
This app has the same benefits as youtube, the only difference really is, Youtube plays videos while Pinterest has pictures and blogs. But they benefit me the same way. So, this was a short explanation, but I really don't want to repeat myself. lol. I'm sure you get it.

#3 Listonic (Free app for Android and iPhone)
This is a very helpful app for budgeting and making lists. I mainly use this app for my grocery list because this app can calculate everything on my list. I don't need to bring a calculator with me or exit this app to use the calculator on my phone. What you do is, list down everything you need for groceries and then add the price per piece of each item and how many of that item you're going to buy. You are going to do this on everything on your list. Whenever you put an item in your cart, you have to check it off your list and the app will automatically calculate how much everything on your cart costs. Pretty neat, right?

#4 My Calendar (Free app for Android and iPhone)
This is a very important app. This is not your regular calendar. This is a calendar where you can monitor your period or menstrual cycle. This also shows your fertility days and ovulation day. So that's very helpful when you're trying to get pregnant or avoiding getting pregnant. Goes both ways, really. But this is not just for SAHM, this is for everyone as long as your a girl. lol

#5 My Fitness Pal (Free app for Android and iPhone)
Staying fit is really important. You don't neglect your health just because you're already a mom. That's not an excuse. Staying fit is not just for being a hot momma, it's also beneficial for your health and in the long run, can benefit everyone in the family. Because moms take care of everyone, and I mean everyone and to be able to do that, we must be healthy and fit. So comes this app. You can track your calorie intake by logging in every single thing you ate for the day and record your exercises.

It tells you how many calories you have consumed and how much is left at the end of the day. You can track your progress and the app gives you weight predictions when you submit your daily calorie intake report. When you record an exercise that you did that day, It also counts the calories you burned and subtract that from your intake.

This app also suggests healthy food recipes and fitness blogs and you can also track your steps. So really, this is an overall fitness app.

#6 Cozi (Free to download but it has some features that only Gold users can access)
This is an app where you can input anything from a grocery list, Upcoming events, To do lists, Reminders for anything you need a reminder of, etc. Although I don't use this for my grocery list because I already use my Listonic app for that and this doesn't calculate the list. I use this for events and homework reminders for my son's school and for my daily to-do lists.

The app also has a recipes section and a journal section where you can jot down those important things that happened in your day. This has a lot more features if you're a gold user(Gold means you paid for the app). But I'm contented with the feature I am using right now and I don't think I will be needing those paid features anyway.

#7 Wunderlist (Free app for Android and iPhone)
This is another listing app. You can create any lists with this app and categorize them. I mainly use this for my budgeting, movies to watch, family wishlist and bills list. This does not calculate the prices as well. But it is a good app for check listing. This was what I was using for my grocery list before I discovered Listonic.

You may have noticed that I have a lot of apps for listing. I just like making lists and it's so fun and useful in my everyday life. It makes my life a bit easier since I don't have to write everything down on a piece of paper and then throw it away after. And I feel like I'm helping to save the environment this way because I don't have to waste paper.

So there you have it. The 7 useful apps for stay at home moms that helps make life a bit fun and easy. Let me know if you've tried any of these apps yourself and please comment down below if you have an app that you can also suggest that will be useful for moms and everyone.

PS: I did not provide any link for downloading, I just provided the logo of each app for you to find them easily in your app stores. This is not a sponsored post. I just really love these apps and they have been very useful for me that is why I decided to make an article about them. You can find them on your phones Play/App Store.

I'm Ciel, a stay-at-home mom, beauty junkie and a freelance writer. My goal for this new blog is to share what it's like to be a stay-at-home mom, managing a family of three, living on one income and still look your best while doing it. Yes! We can do all of that. Here, I will share some tips and hopefully inspire moms like me to manage not only their home and family, but also themselves. Let's bring out the "Lady Boss" in you.

Sunday, June 11, 2017

We’ve all struggled at some point in our lives with money. That is why we need to learn how to save and value every single penny we earn. There are tons of ideas, tips, and tricks out there that promise to give us the knowledge needed to effectively hoard money for the future or for whatever reason we can think of. Sure, they give us good ideas and it may sound like it can work for us. however, not everything works for everyone.

But these 3 Money Saving Rule of Thumb or money saving tips that I have for you is all you need to know to effectively get into the habit of saving money.

Photo from google

#1 Live within your means

Spend what you can spend without going broke, basically. Don't buy stuff you know you can't afford. You know how much money you earn, but do you know how much money you can spend? This means budgeting your money and categorizing them to where they need to go. Making sure you will have enough money to spend for your daily expenses until the next payday and still have some left for savings.

I have an article on how to budget with one income only. It's my simple but detailed budgeting style that I created myself. It has a free budgeting printable included in it. Click here to read the article.

Photo from google

#2 Prioritize

Knowing the difference between your wants and needs. Believe it or not, those are 2 very different words. Your needs are the things that you use daily that cannot be avoided and you cannot live without. Food and hygienic products are two examples. While your wants are the things that you wish to have but you definitely can do without. Prioritizing what's more important will teach you to spend wisely and save money.

Photo from google

#3 Don't deprive yourself

This may sound counter-intuitive to the first two rules, but hear me out. When you've finally learned to accept it and get used to the first two rules. You can reward yourself every once in a while. Buy one thing from your wish list, considering you have a bit of extra money or eat at a nice restaurant. Don't deprive yourself. Because depriving yourself will only cause you to spend more money. Why? because saving money can sometimes feel stressful, a little splurge is needed to keep our heads above the water.

Keep in mind that you don't need a ton of tips that in the end, only confuses you and leads you even further away from your main goal. Life is complicated enough, you don't need even more complicated tips to save your hard-earned cash. Just stick to the basics and your good to go. Remember that everything requires your dedication for you to succeed.

I'm Ciel, a stay-at-home mom, beauty junkie and a freelance writer. My goal for this new blog is to share what it's like to be a stay-at-home mom, managing a family of three, living on one income and still look your best while doing it. Yes! We can do all of that. Here, I will share some tips and hopefully inspire moms like me to manage not only their home and family, but also themselves. Let's bring out the "Lady Boss" in you.

5. Add the soy sauce or oyster sauce and then mix thoroughly with everything. Cook for at least 2 minutes.

6. Serve and enjoy with the family.

That is my simple tuna fried rice recipe. Not only is this dish delicious, It also has some good health benefits in it.

Please let me know your thoughts about this recipe in the comments section below and let me know if you've tried it. If you'd like to see more of this kind of post here on my blog, make sure to comment that as well.

I'm Ciel, a stay-at-home mom, beauty junkie and a freelance writer. My goal for this new blog is to share what it's like to be a stay-at-home mom, managing a family of three, living on one income and still look your best while doing it. Yes! We can do all of that. Here, I will share some tips and hopefully inspire moms like me to manage not only their home and family, but also themselves. Let's bring out the "Lady Boss" in you.

Sunday, April 16, 2017

In this blog post, I will share with you how we budget with one income only and still managed to save up.
A little disclaimer-You may think that this is such a random post since I started with beauty reviews. But as I have mentioned in my intro, My blog is going to be all about beauty, fashion, and lifestyle. So I think this is still appropriate.

We live in the Philippines and a family who lives with only one income is very common here. Now I know how hard it is to make ends meet when only the husband or the wife is earning money for the whole family. Trust me, I've been there and it's not fun when you have no clue what you're doing. We started a family at the age of 18. We're not ready and we don't have a clue about parenting and earning money. We've been so broke and we had to rely on our parents for money and food and even for our son's school fees. It's not easy and it's embarrassing to have to ask for money from our parent's when we are already adults and are capable of making money for ourselves. Even more so, asking for their help to provide for our child. I know a lot of people can relate to this.

My husband and I struggled at first when it comes to stretching every single penny he earned. Since we did not take any course in parenting at a young age, nor earning money and budgeting(as if they exists), We often just buy the stuff we thought we needed not thinking of the future whatsoever. "One-day millionaires" is what we're called. We spend out all his salary in less than a week and then the rest of the month, we're literally broke. Thanks to our parents, we can still eat. Until we grew tired of that kind of lifestyle and realized that it's not a good habit and our son won't have a good future if we keep doing that. We matured basically.

So I started watching videos and reading blog posts about budgeting and saving money. I learned a lot of stuff from different people and suggested to my husband that we try them out. Now, we have created our own style of managing my husband's income and it's been working for us for almost 2 years now. So, I decided to share it with you.

TIP #1 - The first and most important thing to remember is to make sure you know the difference between Wants and Needs. Think carefully if something is really a necessity or not. Make a list with two columns. Needs and Wants. List everything your family absolutely needs such as food, electricity, shelter, daily expenses and savings. Categorize them. Here's an example of a categorized list that a family needs.

TIP #2 - Assign an envelope for each category. This will organize all your money to where they need to go and can avoid you from spending them somewhere else.
*Grocery (Food and water, etc.)
*Bills(electricity bill, phone bill, cable and internet bill, etc.)
*Budget(Daily expenses such as Husbands transportation to work, husbands lunch and snack at work, etc.)
*Savings(Whatever is left from the salary after)

Grocery. List down all the essentials. From food, toiletries, and important stuff. Make sure this list has just the bare essentials in it. It's very important that you list down their corresponding prices as well. This way, you already know exactly how much you need to bring to the grocery store and avoid buying any unnecessary things and overspending.

Bills. List down the bills you need to pay for the month. Assign an envelope for each bill and put the exact amount inside each envelope. (I use an accordion type organizer for this. But an envelope would be fine.)

Budget. Calculate the daily expenses of each family member and multiply it by how many days are left until the next payday. This will ensure that your daily expenses will be covered 'till the next paycheck comes. Provided that you stick to your daily budget religiously. Self-discipline is key.

Savings. This doesn't really need an explanation. But whatever is left from your money after all the expenses are covered. You keep it in the "Savings" envelope and deposit it in your bank account once it has accumulated. What I do is, categorize my savings as well. Because, We're saving up for a lot of things, right? For school, for the things we want to buy, for vacations and for fast food, really. So I list down the things I'm saving up for and divide the extra money into each one of them. Making sure that I dedicate the most amount of savings into the most important thing.

TIP #4 - Here's where we're going to talk about the "Wants". You may be thinking, "How will my family enjoy going to the mall, watching movies, shopping and going on trips?" Well, That my friend is why we are saving our extra money. Also, if we have leftover money from our daily budget. We save those for the things we want to buy. It is very important that you learn to save every last extra money you can. You will thank yourself in the future.

I think that basically covers everything I have to share with you. I'm not saying that these tips are the best out there. I'm just sharing them with you for the reason that it has been working for us for quite a while now and it might work for you as well.

I made this printable that I used for budgeting our money and I will share it with you for free.CLICK HERE to download the FREE PRINTABLE

Let me know in the comments section below if you have any other tips that you can share with us. And also let me know if you've tried my budgeting tips and how it worked out for you.

I'm Ciel, a stay-at-home mom, beauty junkie and a freelance writer. My goal for this new blog is to share what it's like to be a stay-at-home mom, managing a family of three, living on one income and still look your best while doing it. Yes! We can do all of that. Here, I will share some tips and hopefully inspire moms like me to manage not only their home and family, but also themselves. Let's bring out the "Lady Boss" in you.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Beauty is an investment. We tend to spend a lot of time and money on products that can make us more beautiful. But it doesn't always have to be expensive. There are a lot of options out there. Products and tools that are budget friendly but can still do the job well enough do exist.

Take this set of brushes for example. It is said that this set is a perfect dupe for the famous and expensive Zoeva brush set. Many have tried it and agreed. I am one of them. This is indeed the more affordable version and it works the same. At only 250 Pesos, You will get the same effect. The bristles are nice and soft, No shedding at all, the handle is very sturdy and the overall look of it is classy. Definitely, a set that you would want to display out on your vanity table.

I'm Ciel, a stay-at-home mom, beauty junkie and a freelance writer. My goal for this new blog is to share what it's like to be a stay-at-home mom, managing a family of three, living on one income and still look your best while doing it. Yes! We can do all of that. Here, I will share some tips and hopefully inspire moms like me to manage not only their home and family, but also themselves. Let's bring out the "Lady Boss" in you.

Thursday, February 23, 2017

I'm Ciel, a stay-at-home mom, beauty junkie and a freelance writer. My goal for this new blog is to share what it's like to be a stay-at-home mom, managing a family of three, living on one income and still look your best while doing it. Yes! We can do all of that. Here, I will share some tips and hopefully inspire moms like me to manage not only their home and family, but also themselves. Let's bring out the "Lady Boss" in you.

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

For those of us who love makeup and enjoy putting it on, It is very important that we remove it as well. As much as it can make us look beautiful and make us feel confident, It can also do a lot of damage to our skin. Cosmetic products have some ingredients that are very harmful when you leave it on your skin for a very long time, Not to mention all the dirt and pollution that we encounter on a day to day basis. That's why we should cleanse our face and let our skin breathe regularly.

The Spider Puff Cleanser not only thoroughly cleanses your face, it also removes makeup, exfoliates and moisturizes your skin with its "spider web" type puff.

It has all natural ingredients that take care of your skin. It's really an all in one product that is convenient and travel-friendly. (This photo is from their website)

It is very easy to use and can remove makeup that is rather hard to remove with just a normal cleanser.

Here are some of the makeup products that I find hard to remove with my regular cleanser. Heads up: The toughest one to remove is the Matte in Detail lippy.

To use, massage the sponge gently on your skin.

The final result. As you can see, the Spider Puff Cleanser removed most of the makeup that again, is hard to remove. But, nobody's perfect and such can be said to skincare products as well. A tiny bit of the lippy still remains. But we can't deny how it removed the most amount of product.

I really like this product. It has a lot of skin benefits and it does everything that usually three products do for me. The puff itself is so soft and it feels so good on the skin. It also has a nice scent to it that is not overwhelming and not bothersome. Although it only has 65mL of product, you can still use it for a long time because a small amount is enough to cleanse the whole face.

I'm Ciel, a stay-at-home mom, beauty junkie and a freelance writer. My goal for this new blog is to share what it's like to be a stay-at-home mom, managing a family of three, living on one income and still look your best while doing it. Yes! We can do all of that. Here, I will share some tips and hopefully inspire moms like me to manage not only their home and family, but also themselves. Let's bring out the "Lady Boss" in you.

Thursday, February 9, 2017

It's my first time to try a product that has ginseng in it. I read and heard a lot of good things that ginseng can do, Not only for your health but also for your skin. Since I am going to talk about a skin care product, We will only focus on the skin benefits. To share some, Ginseng has anti-aging properties and it helps in toning and brightening the skin.

Here's an introduction to the product that I'm going to feature.

Elella Ginseng Therapy Deep Cleansing Foam is basically a facial foam that delicately cleans out pores and makeup residue on your face. It gently exfoliates dead skin cells to make your skin glowing and soft to touch. The ginseng extract moisturizes dry skin and provides nutrition to keep it healthy and beautiful.

Elella products were recognized last September 24, 2016, for its unique formulation and received the Seal of Excellence Award 2016 and Most Innovative Skincare Formulation by the Asian Achiever Award 2016.

Now, Talking about my experience with using this product. I can say that this is unlike any other product that I've tried. From the first use, I immediately felt the exfoliation. I am not trying to sound like an infomercial here, But it is really amazing. My face feels softer and cleaner in just one use.

And then there's also the feeling of skin tightening after use. I'm pretty sure that the anti-aging properties that the ginseng provides are taking effect.

To sum it up, I will list the Pros and Cons of this product and some basic details as well.

Price: Php420

Content: 150mL

Where to buy: http://www.erenmckaybeauty.com or 2nd level at Fishermall in Quezon City

That's about it for my review of the Elella Ginseng Therapy Deep Cleansing Foam. I hope this was helpful and informative enough. If you have other questions, request and suggestions, Please comment that below and I will be more than happy to answer.

I'm Ciel, a stay-at-home mom, beauty junkie and a freelance writer. My goal for this new blog is to share what it's like to be a stay-at-home mom, managing a family of three, living on one income and still look your best while doing it. Yes! We can do all of that. Here, I will share some tips and hopefully inspire moms like me to manage not only their home and family, but also themselves. Let's bring out the "Lady Boss" in you.

About Me

I'm Ciel, a stay-at-home mom, beauty junkie and a freelance writer. My goal for this new blog is to share what it's like to be a stay-at-home mom, managing a family of three, living on one income and still look your best while doing it. Yes! We can do all of that. Here, I will share some tips and hopefully inspire moms like me to manage not only their home and family, but also themselves. Let's bring out the "Lady Boss" in you.